Day 2 - Hitting The Slopes

Val Thorens Travel Blog

We awoke bright and early to a breakfast of French bread, cheese, salami, croissants and pain au chocolat, the perfect pre-ski meal that we would have every morning of our stay. After managing to squeeze into our ski boots, something which we struggled to do on a daily basis, we headed down to Ski School, both excited and a little nervous.

Our nerves eased up as we met with our group, but we maintained our excitement. Our fellow students at Ski School were from all over Europe, and we were lucky to meet several other Scots. After a little chat, and finding out that almost everyone else was equally inexperienced, our lesson began. The first task was learning how to put on our skis and how to move in them. Getting the skis on was easy enough, however moving was a little tricky, especially uphill! It was easy to get a few steps before sliding backwards! After a little practice we were all able to walk up a slight hill for our first "ski".

As I watched the first few go down fairly smoothly, albeit rather squint, I knew that I would be the first to fall. And I couldn't have been more correct, as I managed to land on my backside. Dave went down quite smoothly enough and looked like a natural. After a few more runs we were split into 3 groups. The top group was sent off, as they had all skied before. Dave made it into the 2nd group and I was in the bottom group.

Dave and his group made there way up to a close by slope to learn the basics of controlling your speed, whilst I was learning more about balance. Luckily for me I picked it up quick and was told to join Dave's group the next day. After a quick meet-up with Niki and Brett over lunch, we all headed out to the slopes for some practice, as lessons were in the morning only. Dave and I brushed up our skills of controlling speed on a nursery slope and soon the confidence was growing.

However, this allowed us to be convinced by Niki and Brett to tackle a tough looking slope that run dangerously close to a button lift. We got to the top of the slope via the button lift, and were soon on our way down the slope, attempting to tackle it in stages. But we were soon a little out of control as the slope was far steeper than what we had tackled in the morning. In the end we practically rolled down the hill, but pledged to conquer this dreaded slope by the end of the holiday.

After our first ski we were famished and were really glad to get dinner in the chalet, which Niki prepared. Once we had our fill, we were off to the pub for a few drinks to wind down the day.